Politics Facebook blocking news in Australia

[Ivan le Fou]

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The former chief executive officer for Facebook Australia and New Zealand, Stephen Scheeler, said the social media giant has pulled out a big gun and fired on Australia by banning users from viewing and sharing news on the platform.


The news ban, which has spilt over also to affect government and emergency services, is Facebook's retaliation to the Morrison government’s impending News Media Bargaining Code.

Major news outlets including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Age, and The Epoch Times, discovered on Thursday morning that the tech giant had implemented an outright ban across their Facebook pages.

However, a swathe of non-media related Facebook pages were also caught in the crossfire, with websites for the state Queensland Health Department, the national Bureau of Meteorology, members of Parliament, and even non-profit organizations such as 1800 Respect and trade unions saw their pages wiped.



As a not so bright individual once said:

Do remember though these are privately owned outlets, they are free to have who they want. Twitter is kind of an enormous bar where everyone can have a drink and engage in a conservation. As in any bar, the owner can throw out the people he thinks are rowdy.

 

[BCNTM]

There are only so many articles you can write about sheep ? ?

 

[Jake84]

What’s there to talk about in Australia anyway beside they change PM like underwear and actually are being complete jackasses to New Zealand as seen in this article:

New Zealand lashes at Australia in citizenship row over terror suspect

New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern accuses Australia of "abdicating its responsibilities" over the woman.

www.bbc.com

 

[Deleted member 11302]

What’s there to talk about in Australia anyway beside they change PM like underwear and actually are being complete jackasses to New Zealand as seen in this article:

Well, a country that actually votes someone like Jacinda into the highest office has it coming, if you ask me. Not being d!ck or hypocrite either, I have to accept a lot of anti-German sentiment and had to learn to take it on the chin. Merkel has been nothing but a wreckingball for Europe and the nation voted her into office four f'cking times.

Don't even get me started on the sh!t I have to eat for being of Iranian descent.

 

[Jake84]

Well, a country that actually votes someone like Jacinda into the highest office has it coming, if you ask me. Not being d!ck or hypocrite either, I have to accept a lot of anti-German sentiment and had to learn to take it on the chin. Merkel has been nothing but a wreckingball for Europe and the nation voted her into office four f'cking times.

Don't even get me started on the sh!t I have to eat for being of Iranian descent.

Yeah I see your point even though it’s a bit unfair. Ideally we wouldn’t have voted in Macron in France either. There’s always the « silent majority » that would rather have had a different leader/President or PM.

Don’t underestimate the power of some crooked politicians to win over « their » people several times in different elections over the years. Some of us aren’t that gullible and there’s also, at least here in France what’s known in America as « the lesser of two evils » which is why France had chosen Macron over Le Pen.

 

[BravoZulu]

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[morris]

There are only so many articles you can write about sheep ? ?

Same number as about strawberry-blondes in the royal veggie patch

 

[morris]

fb = fascist by-blow

 

[TheKiwi]

Facebook doesn't want to pay NewsCorp for sending people to their webpages.

Naturally any Australian government is going to prioritise giving money to NewsCorp over FB users convenience.

 

[Deleted member 11302]

Yeah I see your point even though it’s a bit unfair. Ideally we wouldn’t have voted in Macron in France either. There’s always the « silent majority » that would rather have had a different leader/President or PM.

Don’t underestimate the power of some crooked politicians to win over « their » people several times in different elections over the years. Some of us aren’t that gullible and there’s also, at least here in France what’s known in America as « the lesser of two evils » which is why France had chosen Macron over Le Pen.

Yes, absolutely. I agree in spirit. Only I would argue that people like Macron/Jacinda/Merkel only offer the appearance of being the lesser evil.

I do not for a second buy the argument peddled by so-called moderates that right-wing populists would have done even half the damage in the western world that the current establishment has caused.

EDIT: this spat between Straya and FB smacks pungently of FB's open partisan preferences. I cannot imagine that they would react in a similar fashion if an Australian Labour-led government had made similar demands, at the very least they would have made gestures of accomodation.

 

[Ivan le Fou]

What’s there to talk about in Australia anyway beside they change PM like underwear and actually are being complete jackasses to New Zealand as seen in this article:

New Zealand lashes at Australia in citizenship row over terror suspect

New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern accuses Australia of "abdicating its responsibilities" over the woman.

www.bbc.com

And that justifies FB's move in what way exactly?

We are talking about a foreign (from Australia's pov) private company retaliating against a government/country by banning their news outlets from the platform.

A foreign and private company overreaching and deciding/dictating what the people of Australia can and cannot see in term of news outlets from their own country.

The fact Australia is getting new PMs every week or so and their relations with NZ are matters that concern Australia's government and Autralia's government alone. A foreign, private, social media platform has no right, whatsoever, to interfere.

But! Let's consider this as a valid predicate, for hypothetic's sake: it sets a precedent.
Thus allowing facebook to apply the same measures to other countries. Tomorrow France passes a resolution/law/amendment/whatever that displeases FB: French news outlets are now banned from sharing contents and French people are banned from sharing French news content.

Another scenario: FB took the liberty to to sanction Australia in that way. In that case, why hasn't FB applied the same restrictive measures to other countries that are/may be more morally reprehensible? Like China for instance? Or Iran?

 

[Ivan le Fou]

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[downsizer]

Pretend I'm thick.....I don't use facetube so how are they doing this? If I want news I go to a news website, how would one get news through facetube? What is actually going on?

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Pretend I'm thick.....I don't use facetube so how are they doing this? If I want news I go to a news website, how would one get news through facetube? What is actually going on?

Let's pretend this forum is facetube on a very, extremely, enormously, slower scale.
We can interact with other members, and post articles, links, stuff, etc... from one location, about a topic, etc... we can "share content".

For instance, I shared a link to that story on the forum. Members of the forum (possibly non-members as well, but let's not go on too far a tangent) can see the link and story. It is accessible to them and they have access to it.
Now, the TOS of the forum say some content is a no-go, resulting in big-ban-hammer; for instance pr0n. People can, technically, post pr0n here. But that will then trigger the intervention of a mod/admin and the person who posted the big-no-no will go *poof* along with the big-no-no post. In other words: the response will not be automatic, it will require a human intervention from a "concerned member" to report the post and then the intervention from a mod/admin to remove the post and the poster.


Well, facetube removed that from Australia.
Facetube made it so that this specific type of content (Australian news) automatically banned, bloked and made inaccessible for people in Australia.

 

[Royal]

Pretend I'm thick.....I don't use facetube so how are they doing this? If I want news I go to a news website, how would one get news through facetube? What is actually going on?

Glad I'm not the only one...

 

[NZM305]

My very simplistic over view:

Australian Media Organisations: WWaaahhhh we're not getting as much money as we use to when the only place people could get the news was the tv/radio or a newspaper. Now FB/Google gets those advertising dollars even when its just headline snippet link to our content. Government you have to do something.

Australian Government:
Ok will do. Right FB/Google you now have to make a deal to pay some of your revenue to the Media Companies when their news content is linked on your site.
Or else......

Google:
Well this sucks and is a S**t load of work but we'll start making some deals.

FB:
F#$k that, that sounds like too much hard work, we'll just block all australian news on fb.......... which includes goverment department media releases and information....... like bushfire alerts etc.

Australian Government:
Wait?........ Wot?.......

Everybody:
Wwaaaaaahhh they are being mean to me. ?

 

[Jake84]

I really like when someone summarize things whilst having a good sense of humor about it. Thanks.

 

[TheKiwi]

Yeah that sums it up pretty nicely.

 

[digrar]

Ironically half of these media companies were linking to nothing more than a subscription page. Pay to play. So they want FB to pay for the link, the user to pay to read the article, plus bombard them with a heap of advertising while you're at it.

They are taking the piss.

I'm eager to see who blinks first. I doubt this is hitting Big M Dizzles bottom line very hard at all...

 

[Flagg]

I’m a fan of anything to bring big Tech to heal.

A big fan.

However, while we need to prevent over reach by government or Big Tech, we need to balance it against the Hot Competition we face against a rising China.

While the West suffers a Mao like Cultural Revolution Chocker full of digital Struggle Sessions, we cannot forget that the CCP/PLA of today is the same that liquidated 40+ million in Mao’s Great Leap Forward, many thousands at Tiananmen, and unknown numbers very recently in Hong Kong and with the Uyghar people.

That’s what they do to their own people, a worse fate surely awaits non Han people who inhibit the CCP/PLAs pact with the people of China.

If we kneecap our own Big Tech, while further innovative replacements are likely, we will also likely run into a wall of Metcalfe’s Law(network effect) and Zipf’s Law(distribution).

In short. If you‘re biggest and first, you win....decisively.

China’s Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei(BATH) have a fully integrated strategy akin to Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines combined arms and cross domain operations in concert with government.

In the west, FAANG are fighting each other and government.

In order to win, we need to:

1)Bring Big Tech to heel
2)Trust government, which requires government to be truly worthy of it
3)Develop a geodigital strategy that offers a compelling value proposition for rest of world.
4)While partnering with Big Tech to compete against China, nurture and protect new innovation.

Measures of global power are no longer measured in just carrier battle groups.

The new measures of power are installed user base, daily/monthly active users, mobile transaction value/volume.

If you have the installed user base, active users, and mobile transaction value/volume then you have the power to change the means of exchange used on the platform.

Facebook’s Libra is stillborn, the digital Yuan relentlessly continues.

I absolutely despise Facebook, but they are one of our most powerful weapons to counter China in rest of world.